The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

Gone with her were the spirits and the guests, as well as that luminous gaiety that had always been present because she did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously if He himself never had.

I am convinced that if my grandmother Isabel had lived longer, I would be a different woman today. I spent the first eleven years of my childhood in my grandfather’s house. When my grandmother died, her husband went into a deep silent mourning. He dressed in black from head to toe, painted some of the furniture black, and banned gaiety from the house: no music, games, parties, dessert, flowers, etc. It was a gloomy and cold house that soon began to deteriorate because no one really cared for it. My clairvoyant grandmother was the light of the house, the light of our lives. She truly believed that this world was a divine joke. My somber Basque grandfather thought the joke was not funny at all.